The Best New Horror 2

by Ramsay Campbell

  For his part, Steve was less interested in the magnificence of Agamemnon’s gold death-mask, or the bronze statue of Poseidon, and more inclined to the less dramatic pieces. Especially two steatite pyxis, flat trinket boxes. He lingered long over the cabinet in which they resided along with other, similar artefacts, looking at the items, labelled as having been discovered in a grave on Delos.

  “See the carving on those lids?” he said to Elizabeth, who was itching to move on.

  “Mmm.” She was sure her growing boredom was beginning to show. It was, after all, merely grooves cut or chiselled into the lids.

  “A spiral pattern. Very simple.” He paused. What was he trying to say, Elizabeth wondered.

  “Very like . . . very like spiral carvings in Britain and Ireland from four-thousand years ago.”

  “Is there a connection, then?” Elizabeth asked.

  “A mystery at least,” he replied mysteriously. “Prehistoric, pagan symbology . . .”

  Elizabeth was about to say something, but noticed that Steve was lost, hypnotised, transfixed by the objects. She stared down at them too, trying to see what it was that he was finding so fascinating. Then she was subjected to an optical illusion, or so she thought at first. As when sometimes a particular type of pattern in carpet or wallpaper defies the eye’s usual ability to see two-dimensionality, and parts of the design assume a three-dimensional region of space between the observer and the flatness of the motif itself. Shake your head, but it still insists in occupying space where the logical mind tells you it isn’t. These coils were doing that to her. She wondered if that was why Steve was particularly taken with them.

  She was about to phrase that question when she was overcome by a dizzy spell. The spirals, two maze-like hummocks, swum round making her feel as if she was turning in the opposite direction. A sensation of nausea tensed her stomach. Her legs were beginning to swing clear of the floor. Her arms flailed out to stop the unwanted motion.

  “The breasts of the queen of ghosts,” a voice spoke, though it did not sound like Steve’s; it was harsher, rasping, ugly. The words stole over her emotions, taking on a weight far heavier than the mere syllables themselves. The voice continued:

  “Are they not compelling?” It was spoken rhetorically. “The unwary traveller may succumb to her ways.”

  The malignant voice was gone as suddenly as it had appeared and so too had the illusion. Elizabeth found she was leaning into Steve’s supporting arms.

  “You all right?” he asked, his eyes expressing concern.

  “Mmm. Dizzy, just a dizzy spell. It must be too warm in here.”

  “Well, let’s sit you down for a while, eh?” Steve was leading her by the elbow to a nearby bench.

  “No, really, Steve. I feel so silly. I’m okay. Really.” Several people were staring and she felt slightly embarrassed. They sat nevertheless and Elizabeth was grateful to be able to feel cool marble walls at her back.

  “You look like you’re about to ask me a question?” Steve was rummaging in a bag for the guidebook.

  Elizabeth was about to ask him whether the wormy carvings had had a similar effect on him. Instead, she said, “Who, or what is the ‘queen of ghosts’?”

  “Quite a question for someone with a professed lack of mythological knowledge,” he replied.

  She looked at him, smiled sweetly at his expression of mock disdain and said nothing. He finally relented. “She, the queen of ghosts, is Hecate, a minor deity in Greek myth, but she’s assumed a wider influence world-wide—darkly linked to the ghastly underworld,” he added with an amused, sinister flourish.

  “Any connection with those trinket boxes?” Elizabeth found herself asking despite the thought of having to explain to him her auditory hallucination.

  “Well, not that I’m aware of . . . Might be worth a little research though. But—”

  Elizabeth knew what was coming and interrupted. “Well, I’m feeling much better now. Fancy a trip down Mycenae way? It’s the next room . . .”

  “I’m not too good in the sun,” he had said, talking about sunbathing. Naturally, Elizabeth had thought, his freckled body that had made him so attractive to her in the first place. And that wiry red hair. She also liked the soft New England accent in his voice and his lack of brashness. It was interesting to discover a man less outgoing and more reserved than her, especially in an American. Her own job, in catering, meant she led a busy lifestyle, travelling and talking to clients about menus and venues; preparing the food and presentation with her small staff, and so on. Elizabeth’s idea of a holiday, therefore, was to keep off her feet as much as possible.

  The boat swayed rhythmically on a calm Aegean sea. The sensation was hypnotic. Elizabeth relaxed on a spare bit of deck in her bikini, her brown body deliciously warm, and she could almost feel her auburn hair becoming bleached in the hot sun. The mix of voices from the other passengers provided a background drone along with the sputtering of the boat’s engines. It was dreamy and pleasurable.

  She felt herself drifting off, hypnagogic, aware of a dream she was about to have, a strange encounter on Delos, deep into the phantasmal past when Zeus chained the wandering island to the bottom of the Aegean with adamantine chains.

  “Here, hold this,” Zeus said, his voice a soft lilt for such a god. Elizabeth stirred, unwilling to allow the waking dream to finish, but Zeus—no, it was Steve—shook her shoulder. “Don’t fall asleep in this sun!” She opened her soft brown eyes and frowned at him.

  “I was just about to have a good time with Zeus,” she said, smiling. “And don’t worry about me—it’s you who needs to keep out of the sun, Steve.”

  “Don’t bother about that now, here, take hold of this.” He handed her his rucksack loaded with camera equipment. “It might slip off the boat.” He then turned to the rail and pointed his lens seaward. In the distance were islands. You couldn’t escape them in this part of the world, but the tour guide was telling everyone that they could now observe Delos.

  “There she blows,” Steve puffed as he pushed his sunglasses back on his head, squinting his pale blue eyes briefly before hiding them behind the camera. Tourists were stirring, their lethargy over as the distant island closed towards them.

  The dusky female Greek voice boomed from the loudspeaker once more. “Well ladees and chentlemen, we are nearly at the ancien’ islan’ of Delos. I c’hope you will enjoy your afternoon here. Remember, please,” she continued while Elizabeth pulled on a pale pink blouse and shorts, “you belonck here only four ’ours and you mus’ return back to the boat by four-thirty. Thankyou.”

  Within half an hour they had all disembarked from a small jetty and began to wander slowly inland under the dry, burning sun. Steve was risking his arms, exposed from the sleeves of a tee-shirt, but he wore jeans and hot-looking hiking boots. Elizabeth began to wonder briefly if her flat shoes were the right choice after all, looking at the terrain. Some people, she observed, had gone straight to the small museum to be in the shade or to find refreshments. Delos might well be an unmissable stop for Greek history, Elizabeth thought, but four hours in this heat, with virtually no shade, was almost frightening. The island spread out in front of them as Steve headed for the Agora, the large, worn grey blocks of the old market place reminding her that time had stood still here. In the distance the gentle slope of Mount Cynthus rose up out of the small island. Steve’s camera began to click, providing a counterpoint to the never-ending rasp of the cicadas hidden in the sparse, sun-bleached grasses that grew between the tumbled blocks of the ruins.

  It had been hot in Athens, but this! Elizabeth began to perspire. How did Steve manage in those clothes, and the rucksack, she asked herself. Cynthus’ domed peak was hazed by the rising heat and it made her think back to that evening, the lovely cool evening on Lykabettos where Steve had taken her after the museum. At night the distant lights of Athens had spread below them, a twinkling, moving wash of jewels. They had drunk some wine at the restaurant and felt the cool breeze while m
oths flitted around the lamps. And, she thought, they’d gone up Lykabettos hill in the cable car. Mount Cynthus had no such luxury to reach its ancient theatre and sprawling ruins. No cool wind either, but instead an open blue sky through which the sun flared, white-hot.

  The heat-haze was apparently making arabesques in front of Elizabeth before she realised she was walking on the ancient floor of a house, its remarkably preserved mosaic surface a disturbingly familiar labyrinthine pattern. Steve had sat by the remains of a wall and was changing film. “Did you know,” he said, “that this place was once the cultural and trading empire of the Greeks?” He clicked the back of the camera shut. “Got it.” Elizabeth had heard the tour guide on the boat, but knew that Steve probably had even greater knowledge about the island. She sighed. It wasn’t that she lacked interest, but the heat . . .

  A lizard, the palest green colour, scuttled across marble walls. Cicadas hummed. Suddenly, she realised that there was no one else, other than Steve, nearby. The harbour was invisible, hidden by the contours of the land. The only sound was the island’s ancient insect inhabitants. They stood between what remained of the walls of what was probably a merchant’s house, on hot mosaics, with a well in the corner. Elizabeth looked down to see black water deep below, as unmoving as the fugitive shadow she glimpsed within it. Other crumbling buildings surrounded them, with a profusion of tall, yellow grass finding hospitality everywhere.

  Steve stood up and began looking at his guidebook. “The French first started excavating here in eighteen-seventy-three,” he offered. “And it’s continued right up to the present day.”

  “Yes I know. This place is ‘second only to Pompeii for archeological completeness,’ ” Elizabeth quoted. “I heard the guide tell us.” The parched grass was so still, like a photograph. Nothing stirred.

  “But isn’t it magnificent,” Steve added, apparently unaware of an atmosphere Elizabeth was too easily detecting. “The shrines and temples and houses of a cosmopolitan city . . .”

  “It’s beginning to give me the creeps.”

  “What?” Click went the shutter. “It’s all ruins. There’s nobody here except us tourists.”

  “Where are they then?” She shuddered, despite the burning she felt on her legs. Elizabeth struggled with her thoughts, to find coherence, but the nagging worry didn’t surface. “There might be snakes.” It was the first thing she could think of saying.

  “Well there are supposed to be poisonous snakes here . . .” Steve suddenly thought better of continuing. He put his arm round Elizabeth’s shoulders and kissed her lightly on the lips. They embraced. No emotional entanglements, she reminded herself. She’d never see him again after her holiday. Nevertheless, she found the press of his body against hers comforting amidst those dry, ancient, watchful ruins.

  Mount Cynthus’ human artefacts climbed in front of them. Both Steve and Elizabeth were sweltering, sweating profusely now. The island was spreading out behind and below them, the sea a rich blue, invitingly cool. Steve was running through his films, this time using a zoom lens, back down to the distant architecture of the Terrace of the Lions and the four remaining columns of the Poseidoniasts building. Elizabeth could at last see people, in the distance, like gaily coloured ants crawling about, and behind them the reassuring harbour and the tourist boats, lazily bobbing.

  “Those lions used to border a sacred lake which was fed from a spring somewhere on this mountain, if you can call it a mountain.” Elizabeth mumbled that she had heard as they stumbled on upwards, past the half-moon of the amphitheatre. She could hardly believe there had ever been surface water on such a desiccated island.

  “Who was it again,” she asked, “that this island was sacred to?”

  Steve turned back to face her, his sunglasses a burnished black, hiding his weak eyes. “Delos was the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, you know, the offspring of Zeus and the mortal, Leto.” Wasn’t Artemis related in some way to Hecate? Steve asked himself inconsequentially.

  “God of the Sun and Goddess of the Moon?”

  “Yeah!” He was pleased that at last she seemed to be taking an interest in their expedition.

  On a different tack Elizabeth sat and said, “D’you mind if we have a rest, Steve?”

  He didn’t say anything, but stood wiping the sheen of wet from his reddened brow. They had been on the island for an hour and a half and to her it had seemed forever. It was a fascinating place, of that there was no doubt, but the sun was merciless and the quiet stillness unnerved Elizabeth. It was so unlike the ruins in Athens, those ponderous columns and temples, full of people, surrounded by the heartening life of the modern city. Here a dreamlike atmosphere washed over her and curious, unsurfaced fears slowly paced the depths of her mind. She had heard of the unseen presences supposed to stalk the island, Steve had told her that. She could believe it.

  “Why did they take away all the graves?” Elizabeth asked. It was merely one mystery, if not another, but those thoughts disturbed her, especially now they had almost become part of Delos. The rest of the four hours might be an eternity.

  “In five-forty BC Delos was purified and all corpses removed from ground visible from the Sanctuary,” Steve recapitulated his Greek history, nodding to the peak of the hill. “Then later all ancient tombs were excavated and removed. Since then,” he added, “no births or deaths have been allowed on the island, nobody is allowed to stay permanently.”

  “And nobody lives here now . . .”

  “They were all taken to Rhenea.”

  “Who, the inhabitants?” She removed a wet-wipe from her bag and breathed a languid sigh as she wiped her face with the cold tissue. Dust scrambled as her foot slid quickly away from an unusually inquisitive lizard. A few forlorn poppies stood out against the stones from whose cracks they grew.

  “No,” he answered, “the cadavers. They were re-buried over there, behind Hecate’s Isle.” There was that name again! He pointed to the nearby island which was clearly visible from the hill. It looked much like any small Greek island from where they sat, but Elizabeth thought it would be better not to visit such a place. She hoped that there was not some additional boat trip available to Rhenea. It was unlikely. After all, they’d only two hours left on Delos before their little Greek craft would drift, seemingly unaided, back to Naxos by way of Myconos. That deep Aegean sea beckoned to her, a safe haven from the morbid marble statuary of Delos.

  It was with a feeling of immense relief to Elizabeth when finally they reached the sanctuary area, despite its history of despoiled graves and disinterred corpses. That last few minutes and she thought she might pass out. Mount Cynthus had been beaten on one of the hottest days of the season. She could see that Steve was also visibly wilting. His camera had for some time hung unused from its neck strap, swinging slightly as he negotiated the tumbled terrain. The panorama below them was magnificent, but Elizabeth was in no mood to appreciate it. She headed numbly for the sanctuary.

  She had expected something more imposing, but it was merely more tumbled masonry. There was a cave, however, albeit one man-made. It consisted of a natural fissure with a pitched roof of large, dressed granite slabs forming a peak about six feet high. At the entrance there were also a number of smaller stones forming a wall and leaving a narrow passage into its short twelve foot length. The most immediate thing Elizabeth noticed was that it offered the one thing that the whole of the rest of Delos did not—shade. She gratefully scrambled inside.

  “I wonder if we’ll have time to look round the museum?” Steve slid in beside her.

  Elizabeth looked at her watch, frowning at the thought of a hasty scramble back down the hillside. “I don’t think there’s time . . .” She began to feel terribly tired and wanted most of all to sleep, just forty winks before venturing out. “I must have a breather, Steve.” Her worried frown caught his wandering attention.

  “Sorry, Liz, I wasn’t thinking. We’ve still got an hour. You relax here for twenty minutes.” He stood up. “I’ll do a bit
more exploring—around the old boneyard! Here—” He opened his rucksack and took out a couple of cans of beer, still reasonably cool despite the temperature to which they had been subjected.

  “Oh, manna!”

  “Forgot I’d brought them until now. Delos is a pretty striking place!” Steve gave her one of his idiotic waves from his brow with his head leaning to one side and a half-sick smile on his face. Elizabeth smiled at him encouragingly. He departed the cave, for a moment his body engulfing the light and making the interior suddenly very dark.

  Elizabeth relaxed, savouring the relative coolness of the cave. She took the rucksack and bundled it behind her head, stretching out. Gritty dust clung to the film of perspiration on the back of her legs, but she forgot any discomfort as sleep insisted her eyes close and her mind begin to drift right-brain-wards, slowly spiraling into slumber, down like a journey back through time’s indefinable continuum. She snapped back alert briefly, her left brain rightly reminding her that she had not quenched her undoubted thirst with one, or possibly both the cans of beer. The moment passed unfulfilled and sleep gratefully came.

  “Oh no!”

  “Mmnn . . .?” Elizabeth was, curiously she thought for her, quickly pulling off her shorts. Bits of sharp stone cut into her buttocks. A figure leaned over her in darkness, its face totally obscured. She could feel heat coming from its body and she knew it was a golden, beautiful body, like a classical Greek statue. She gasped as the masculine shape moved forwards.

  “Wake up!” She felt her shoulder being shaken vigorously, but not the expected penetration.

  “Oh . . . Oh! Steve . . .?” She was at last awake and didn’t much like the timing. “What’s the matter with you?” It was only then that she noticed that in reality it was nearly as dark as in the dream. “What time—”